Use of an Anecdotal Client Feedback Note in Family Therapy

Abstract

To attain information about divergent agendas in family therapy, as well as incorporate client feedback, we present the Client Feedback Note (CFN). The CFN elicits information about each family member's feelings, learning, dislikes, and wishes for each session. Anecdotal feedback after each session may help the therapist have better insight into the clients' perceptions and experience of the therapy and the therapist. Sensitivity to information generated by the CFN can help both therapist and client work to coconstruct a therapeutic process that is relevant to the diverse needs of the client system. This manuscript will (a) discuss literature supporting the use of client feedback in therapy; (b) present the CFN and rationale for its development; (c) discuss our experiences utilizing the CFN along with case examples that illustrate its use; and (d) identify practical applications, limitations, and potential research with using the CFN in systemic therapy.

How Routine Patient‐Centered Monitoring Relates to Therapeutic Gains in Family Therapy: A Single‐Case Study

“…Finally, therapists extensively guided their practice listening to patients’ feedback regarding their treatment experiences reported in HAT. As indicated by therapists in previous surveys (e.g., Haber et al., ; Sales, Gonçalves, Fragoeiro, ; Sales, Gonçalves, Fragoeiro, Silva et al., ), the therapeutic team used the HAT for confirm the impacts of interventions, monitoring therapeutic alliance, testing and reformulating clinical hypothesis, adjusting treatment plans and as a basis for session planning. This result points to the introduction of process PGM in tracking systems, and the provision of systematic qualitative feedback on patient experiences that includes their narratives.…”

“…In contrast, patient‐generated measures (PGM) give patients the possibility of proposing items that reflect their personal areas of concern (see Sales & Alves, for a review), hence favoring a patient‐centered assessment that reflects patient values and needs (Barkham, ; Green, ; Sales, ). Therapists have expressed their preference for integrating PGM in progress tracking systems, not only to monitor individualized outcomes but also to monitor patient experiences (Haber, Carlson, & Braga, ; Jensen‐Doss et al., ; McLeod, ; Sales & Alves, ; Sales et al., ). A personalized monitoring approach, combining nomothetic ROM and qualitative PGM, was implemented, the IPPS System (Sales et al., ), which is tailored for individual, group, couple and family therapy and is integrated on the CORE‐Net System (Barkham, Mellor‐Clark, & Stiles, ); as well as in the MFT‐PRN (Johnson et al., ), an internet‐based portal designed to support a professional community of couple and family therapists on progress monitoring.…”

‘One step up, but not there yet’: using client feedback to optimise the therapeutic alliance in family therapy

“…However, working as family therapists in a feedback‐oriented way is a challenge, as a lot of the traditional feedback instruments were – notwithstanding the empirical support for their reliability and validity – actually not developed with the complexity of the therapeutic alliance in family therapy in mind, nor the complexity of working with young children in family therapy. With one notable exception (Haber, Carlson and Braga, 2014), we did not find any publications on feedback‐oriented psychotherapy in which the specificity of the family therapy session was taken into account. That is why we developed our own simple instrument, the Dialogical Feedback Tool (DFT), to be used in family therapy sessions with young children.…”

Training Family Therapists for Working in the Schools

“…In order to insure that the trainees develop a satisfactory working alliance that takes into account all parts of the system, staff and trainees administer the Client Feedback Note (Haber et al 2014) after every session. This feedback monitors the issues and perceptions experienced by all the family members.…”